Department of Zoology

Principal Investigators

Research area - Developmental Biology

The developmental and homeostatic crosstalk between the nervous and digestive systems
It is becoming apparent that the crosstalk between the intestine and the central brain is key to the regulation of appetite and metabolism. We are interested in identifying the nature and significance of the signals mediating this crosstalk, both during development and in the maintenance of homeostasis. We are doing so using Drosophila melanogaster: a fruit fly with which we share over 60% of our genes. The fly's digestive tract is simpler than ours, but our recent work has revealed conserved mechanisms of homeostatic control involving the intestine. Although the innervation of the fly's gut is also sparser than that of the mammalian digestive tract, we have found that both intestinal neurons and systemic signals play essential roles in coupling nutritional and reproductive state with intestinal homeostasis.

We use a multidisciplinary approach which includes genetic tools to interfere with gene expression in specific tissues, or to inactivate defined subsets of intestinal neurons. We assess the effects of these genetic manipulations using cell biological methods, metabolic assays and physiological techniques.

Our hope is that this research will enhance our understanding how our own body integrates nutritional and metabolic information to adjust internal functions and behaviour, and will cast more light on what goes wrong in metabolic conditions such as diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome.

Research Group - Miguel-Aliaga Lab

Selected publications

• Cognigni P, Bailey AP, Miguel-Aliaga I. Enteric neurons and systemic signals couple nutritional and reproductive state with intestinal homeostasis. Cell Metabolism. In press.
• Bardet PL, Kolaghar G, Mynett A, Miguel-Aliaga I, Briscoe J, Meier P, Vincent JP (2008) A fluorescent reporter of caspase activity for live imaging. PNAS. 105(37):13901-5.
• Miguel-Aliaga I, Thor S, Gould AP (2008) Postmitotic specification of Drosophila insulinergic neurons from pioneer neurons. PLoS Biol 11;6(3):e58.
• Baumgardt M, Miguel-Aliaga I, Karlsson D, Ekman H, Thor S (2007) Specification of neuronal identities by feed forward combinatorial coding. PLoS Biol 5(2):e37.
• Miguel-Aliaga I, Thor S (2004) Segment-specific prevention of pioneer neuron apoptosis by cell-autonomous, postmitotic Hox gene activity. Development 131(24):6093-105.
• Miguel-Aliaga I, Allan DW, Thor S (2004) Independent roles of the dachshund and eyes absent genes in BMP signaling, axon pathfinding and neuronal specification. Development 131(23):5837-48.
• Allan DW, St Pierre SE, Miguel-Aliaga I, Thor S (2003) Specification of neuropeptide cell identity by the integration of retrograde BMP signaling and a combinatorial transcription factor code. Cell 113(1):73-86.
• Chan YB, Miguel-Aliaga I, Franks C, Thomas N, Trülzsch B, Sattelle DB, Davies KE, van den Heuvel M (2003) Neuromuscular defects in a Drosophila survival motor neuron gene mutant. Hum Mol Genet 12(12):1367-76.